And the things look like they’re slow, pudgy plodders that spend all their time wading in the muck. Most people look at a hippo, and they wouldn’t think that the cute li’l rolly-polly can hit up to 50 kph/30 mph at a dead run (that is, faster than most humans).

A hippo wouldn’t keep chasing you for a full mile, though. Usain Bolt managed 44.72 kph during a 100 meter sprint. If you were a world-class sprinter and you got a bit of a headstart, you’d have a decent chance of evading the hippopotamus.

Usain’s record (and, to be fair, all modern track and field records) was under literally the best possible conditions sport science has to offer, though. I doubt even he would be able to replicate his feat in the savannah while being chased by an angry hippopotamus.

But that is a averaged out speed by a mile in racing conditions. Hippos wouldn’t run for a mile, so the short distance speed of a human can be much faster. plus, there are other factors, a runner filled with the adrenaline of competition wouldn’t be nearly as fast as a runner motivated by fear. Plus, what were capable in competions isnt nearly as strong as what were truely capable of. A good example is that of a monkey, much stronger than a human normaly is because it doesnt have the same built in to prevent damage to the body mental limiters as we do. in times of extreme stress, those limiters are automatically removed when survival is at risk. which is why we sometimes get people who end up being able to lift a car a bit or something during dire situations.

“A good example is that of a monkey, much stronger than a human normaly is because it doesnt have the same built in to prevent damage to the body mental limiters as we do.”

No. I’m sorry, as a biologist I have to tell you that is total nonsense.

a) Apes (and monkeys, but let’s talk about apes because they are roughly the same size as humans) are several times stronger than humans, because their skeletal musculature is stronger at a molecular level. A human muscle fiber needs to be several times the diameter of an ape’s muscle fiber to exert the same force. Somewhere in our hominid evolutionary history when our ape ancestors diverged from the common ancestor we share with chimpanzees, we acquired a point mutation in a gene that codes for muscle proteins. Humans effectively suffer from amyosthenia (muscle weakness) compared to apes. But this disadvantage not only survived but spread through the gene pool because it forced the hominids to rely on tools to hunt and prepare food, and fire to cook raw meat and tough roots that we cough no longer chew on our own. There is even a hypothesis that the fact that our weaker and shorter jaw musculature is attached to our skull below the ears and not to a bone ridge at the top of the cranium (as it is with apes) meant that our skull was able to expand up and outwards to give the brain space to grow.

b) All vertebrates have built-in “self-damage prevention”, it’s called pain receptors. By your logic, apes would be constantly damaging their own muscles, sinews and bones because they’re mindless rampaging machines. No. There are people who are born a rare genetic mutation called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain with Anhidrosis (CIPA), they lack any pain receptors because their body does not form the nerve cells responsible for transmitting pain from injuries, extreme heat and cold during embryogenesis, which is not a good thing. They can sense pressure, so they have a sense of touch, but that’s it. People with this disorder often die young from accidental injuries, gangrene, infected burn wounds, or heatstroke (because their bodies do not sweat). I’ve seen a documentary about twins who were born with that disorder. By the time they were teenagers they were effectively cripples. As babies, they would often bite into their own fingers and toes until they bled. As children, they would play roughly with each other, flinging themselves against walls for fun, or climbing on trees and jumping down and breaking their own or each other’s bones, no matter how often their parents tried to desperately reign them in. One described how he used to put his hand on a hot stove whenever his parents weren’t looking because the sizzling of his burning skin was “interesting”. They had to be taught to understand that other people would experience this odd sensation called “pain” when they hit them, because they could not relate what pain meant. When they grew older they started to realize what damage they were doing to their own bodies, and regretted it.

I dunno. I saw a picture of a park ranger outrunning one. (Or, at least, that’s how the caption implied it ended. In case, you’re wondering he was somewhat more motivated than is usual for human runners. You know, because there was a hippo behind him moving as fast as it was capable of.)

It’s more because when a hippo opens his mouth everybody thinks “aww look the hippo’s sleepy, isn’t that cute.”. Wile the hippo is saying “Hey you trespassers if you don’t move away right now i’m taking you out with these giant teeth that can crush you in seconds.”.

Fun fact: Steve Irwin, the man who faced down some of the most dangerous animals nature has to offer, once said that the most terrifying experience of his life was boating across a river where hippos were floating around. It’s not a good idea to wake the ill-tempered creatures that can bite for over a literal ton of pressure.

More white people/tourists die of hippo attack than any other animal sans insects (mosquitoes). The native population isn’t stupid enough to get between hippos and the water.
For raw numbers, the non-insect animal with the most kills is the buffalo (cape, mostly), which tends to hide from the sun under bushes and will attack anything that comes close.

Also I’m fairly sure the “silent H” of herb is solely in American English, which would mean that if you HAD chosen to put “an herbivore” it would have confused the hell out of anyone speaking a different dialect.

Until yesterday I thought “erb” was incorrect as well, but my research (to make sure my comment wasn’t wrong), both online and in my dictionary at home concluded that “erb” is apparently also correct. Probably because it’s common usage.
I never pronounced it like that personally, since I think it sounds kinda silly, but there you go.

There are people who don’t pronounce the H at the beginning of ANY word. And people who put a H in the beginning of any word beginning with a vowel. (and even people who just never call anything “an”.) With dialects, you can have it either way! If someone mixes up a/an in writing, I just assume they’re being phonetic.

Wair, WHAT? How that this even matter for A COMIC PAGE? The word is written here, not pronounced.
The only thing that doesn’t confuse me about this comment is Coleasquid’s ‘done with this shit’ reaction, as not a doktor eloquently words it.

Jurassic Park 3D is hitting the theaters next week here (Netherlands). Since ths start of 3D remakes I was hoping for this one, if only for the awesomeness that is a 3D brachiosaurus sneezing in your face.

They’re herbivores, their digestive tracts are not suited to processing meat. Some eat meat as a sign of stress, but that’s more comparable to people who eat things like glass, tissue paper, and hair. Just because an animals will eat something doesn’t mean it’s food for that animal.

The situation is a bit more complicated than that; most herbivores will occasionally eat meat to supply certain nutrients that are rare in a strict vegetable diet – so not only out of stress – or when food is scarce. Likewise, almost all carnivores eat vegetation at times – our cat regularly tries to poison itself nibbling on our Yucca. Stupid animal.

Meat is far easier to fully digest than plant material, and scarvenging is seen in plenty of herbivores; hippos do so less often than swine, but more commonly than ruminants (which do so as well). It is not the same as humans eating undigestible stuff at all; if they are trully stressed they may do that, but there is no such thing as a pure herbivore or a pure carnivore.

You’d think that people raring to be this pedantic this long after the strip went up would at least have the decency to read some of the other discussion before interjecting. Like, literally one comment up from this.

Herbivores rarely want to kill, min difference is people see a carnivore “oh shit better back out slowly.” people see a herbivore “look at the cute guy.”. People just don’t realise carnivore of herbivore, step on their territorium or threathen them in any way and they’ll strike whether you’re eatable or not has little to do with it.

An important difference is that dangerous herbivores are dangerous ALL the time, whereas most carnivores will ignore you when they’re resting and digesting, and you don’t get too close. Not so much out of empathy for us but because they need to be far more careful with their energy consumption and can’t risk getting injured.

Do we? I’ve always pronounced herbivore with the H, and honestly can’t recall anyone (save for someone doing an awkward “British” accent) pronouncing it without the H. I think people have very strange ideas of how everyone else talks (now herb can go without the H sound, but that’s neither here nor now)

I don’t tend to notice others’ pronunciations of much, but I grew up with all incarnations of ‘herb’ (and thus ‘herbivore’) having a silent ‘h’. I didn’t even know it was correct anywhere to pronounce it! I don’t recall ever specifically saying it, but if asked before seeing this I’d have lumped it in with the ‘dumb language mistakes’ on the same level as verbalizing the ‘t’ in ‘often’ or the like. Learn something new every day, I guess?

(for the record, I am very American, but I have not the foggiest where influences for how I talk come from due to having grown up a military brat and moved around during my childhood.)

also for the record idrc about the comic I’m just laNGUAGE DISCUSSION THIS SOUNDS COOL

True enough. Ironically, however, most of my bruises have come from pushy ewes. When you have a flock of horned girls surrounding you as distribute their grain, manners tend to get pushed aside. The rams are fewer in number, and get sterner training in etiquette.

Call me crazy, but I think that in a situation with something the size of a brachiosaurus, it’d probably be more along the lines of a whale encounter. Yeah, it could definitely kill you dead, but it’s so big and you’re so small that you don’t really register in the ‘threat’ spectrum…unless there’s a baby involved.

Of course, there’s also the possibility that it’d be more like an orca or a dolphin and just kill you for the fun of it…

I grew up on a ranch. I can assure you that cows, while generally calm and placid, can get cranky too. Particularly around calving season. I’ve come a hair’s breadth from being mowed down more than once by a cow that decided I looked at her calf funny.

Depends on the breed, whether or not the cow is alone or in a herd (an herd? J/K), and the individual cow. When I was growing up, we raised Angus and Saler cross for beef. Most Angus were reasonably mellow, but the crossbreeds could be wild, especially during calving season. Just imagine 1500 pounds of pissed off solid bone and muscle that is protecting her calf – and your job is to hold that calf down while sticking a tag in it’s ear! Compared to that, most bulls are gentle.

Ahm cows can just be as agressive as bulls. In switzerland they breed a certain type of cow where the females are used to fight each other.

The alpha cows will attack each other because they think that other cow is here to take her herd over. So they ram and shove and even slice each other with their horns.

The oh so touted bull fighting cow breed in spain has very docile, kind bulls. What makes the bulls so agressive is the treatment before they are shoved into the arena.

They get chilli pepper rubbed in their eyes, the nerv rich horn endings are filed so the nerves are raw and irritated, they are injured with spears and are left thirsty and hungry for 1-3 days prior to the fight.

They use the bulls instead of the cows because the bulls are more bulky and impressive looking..and because they want to cut off the balls from the dying animal as trophy…it implies they might have ball related issues themselves.

Stallions I give you that, those can be quite mean because of their *that is my herd dude!* attitude, but with cows you want to look out for the females a bit more than for the bull.

Most people think bulls are more badass because of how they look, but just like with elephants, in a herd it is the females you have to be aware of.

I feel like I should point out that bullfighting are starved and tortured into a frenzy before they start attacking everything in sight.
Bulls can be really aggressive in general, however, even if you didn’t do anything. Watch out for ’em. And you can always punch a deer if they’re out of line: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=b2d_1320174279&comments=1

While that’s true of bullfighting (once saw part of a “fight” on TV while in Spain, and I couldn’t find anything entertaining or impressive about it, though it did make me a little sick) bull-riding in a rodeo is quite a bit different. For starters, they want them healthy enough to jump around and act general fools of themselves (but if you had some crazy thing climbing on your back and hooting and hollering at you, you’d want them off too) and the rides usually don’t end with the death of the bull (unless it goes completely ape-shit crazy, and looks like it’s going to kill someone and no tranquilizers are handy) They do still (unless this has changed since I last bothered to learn anything about it) tie a rope around the bulls nether region, which adds to his general annoyance/discomfort/rage, and adds to his desire to throw whatever the hell is messing with his back & balls off of him. Also, no guys on horses with spears attacking the bull while the matador takes a break in bull-riding, just a rider, the bull, and clowns when the rider falls/jumps/is bucked off (gah, rodeo clowns…)

Actually, brachiosaurs would probably be a lot safer than most modern herbivores. Jurassic Park really overstates the dinosaur intelligence thing even for the relatively smart ones like small predators, but a sauropod? These things had really staggeringly small brains–as far as we know they didn’t have territorial or defensive instincts, at all. Their only defense was being too big at adulthood for anything to reasonably hunt. The biggest predators could maybe nip at their thighs or underbelly, but the problem with that attack strategy is the part where your thirty-ton kill falls over on top of you.

But no, a human? It’s extremely unlikely it’d even notice you, and it’d move too slowly to step on you by accident unless you were asleep or something. It’s less like how a hippo or a herd of cows would react to a human, and more like how one of those would react to a beetle on the ground.

With ‘no defensive instincts,’ how’d they live long enough to hit fifty tons in the first place? And as for speed, one step equals how many human-scale strides? Plus, necks & tails that could probably one-hit-kill a theropod.

Like sea turtles, actually, re: surviving to adulthood. The mother would lay a massive number of eggs and then walk away forgetting about them, and generally a tiny percentage of them lived long enough to grow to a safe size.

As for not getting stepped on by accident, I’m pretty sure you could cover the distance necessary to not be directly under the foot in the time it would take the foot to rise and fall? Like, easily. You might still be under the thing in a general sense but dodging one footfall isn’t a matter of making a hundred meter dash.

As humans, we’re rather prone to overstating the importance of intelligence. Most reptiles are not intelligent by our standards, but that doesn’t mean they can’t react swiftly and decisively – on the contrary, reptiles can be dangerous adversaries to far cleverer mammals. It just means that their range of possible reactions is limited. Relying on a Brachiosaur to be slow and plodding might be unwise.

They’re herbivores, they can’t digest meat. We went over this already. It’s like how you can eat hair and rocks but that doesn’t make hair and rocks “human food”. When hippos eat meat it’s a sign of stress and/or aggression.

Minor nitpick: A hippo can keep up with Usain Bolt. And if it catches you, it’ll straight bite you in half.
“A bull hippo turned over the dugout canoe from which Tyron was shooting, and bit off his head and shoulders.”
That one panel should’ve had a lot more gore, is what I’m getting at.

Known within Africa as one of the “big five”, “The Black Death” or “widowmaker”, the African buffalo is widely regarded as a very dangerous animal, as it gores and kills over 200 people every year. Buffaloes are sometimes reported to kill more people in Africa than any other animal, although the same claim is also made of hippos and crocodiles.

Don’t you love it when people declare themselves “grammar nazis” and then nitpick spelling or pronounciation, from an entirely parochial and colloquialism-driven understanding of English? It’s like, “grammar” is not a synonym for “pedantic made-up rules about language”, but thanks for playing.

I hate the letter ‘C’ more & I refer to it as the “thief in the alphabet.” For one thing, it doesn’t even have a phonetic sound of its own, having stolen the sounds of ‘K’ & ‘S’ for itself. It even stole the early position in the alphabet (as the third letter) away from those very same letters that it stole its sounds from.

I love how you drew the bull, moose, and rhino panels in particular. They are so beautiful. (If that’s the right word for MGDMT. :P) The pose, the action, the way it fills the field just right, and the bulls fur is really inspiring. Not only did I think the punchline was hilarious this week, but I also loved how you put it together so much. Thanks for making us free comics so people like me can have a good laugh with them.

I played a druid with a moose animal companion in D&D once. This comic reminds me of that, and the many, many creatures whose dying thoughts must have been “It’s a herbivore, how dangerous can OHGODMYSPINEORMONSTEREQUIVALENT”

Yeesh, so many people bitching about whether its ‘a herbivore’ or ‘an herbivore’. Americans, we get it. You dislike the h. It’s ‘erb with you. Most other places use the h. Put on your big boy shorts and just enjoy the comic, you pedantic S.o.Bs.

Don’t blame ALL Americans! I’m American and I staunchly support the pronunciation of the aitch in front of both herb and herbivore. Whenever anyone disagrees with me I link them to this marvelous explanation by Eddie Izzard. Because there’s a fucking aitch in it.

Thanks LOTP, you saved me the effort.
And thanks as always, Coela for the weekly entertainment.
Next time just draw two circles and a diagonal line, we’ll see how many comments argue which circle is in the foreground and thus bigger. Aargh, in fact I need to know right now! Which circle is it, Coelasquid? Which circle!!?

Love this. As someone who actually works with big, scary animals, I’ll freely say that I’d rather deal with lions than hippos. Due to mating systems and the need to deter predators, large herbivores (mostly hoofstock) are generally more dangerous than similarly-sized carnivores. Most large carnivores will only attack healthy, adult humans if a) they’re very hungry, or b) feel threatened. Most large herbivores will take “you looked at me funny” as an excuse to attack.

I am, however, disappointed by the lack of cassowary in this comic. The birds are essentially flamboyant murder-machines.

What I find most amusing about JP is the many misconceptions it created about dinosaurs. My personal favorite being velociraptors. The movie portrays them as ~7′ tall murder-saurs. When in all actuality, they were about 7′ long, and only ~2′ tall. Definitely murder capable, but not the screeching death-machine Speilberg presented. My guess is because it’s a pain in the ass to pronounce ‘deinonychus’ ( dy-NON-i-kus ) consistently. Nor, does it have that *ring to it. But that’s what we were all really looking at.

I’m just talking off the top of my head here so I could be 1000% wrong, but I recall hearing that the raptors in the movie more visually/proportionally resembled Utah raptors? Which doesn’t sound very cool I suppose. Either way, it was misnamed for the cool points, it seems.

IIRC the first Utahraptor was discovered after Jurassic Park came out. I seem to remember it being a bit of a laugh among paleontologists about how after all the nitpicking over the movie velociraptors, a real species pretty much matching the movie raptors gets discovered.

You’d have Sam Neill, Richard Attenborough and Bob Peck saying “dyno-NICK-us” while everyone else said “dy-NON-ickus.” A decent chunk of the audience would never figure out that they were all talking about the same critter.

I chalk up all the weirdness with JP’s “dinosaurs” to the filmmakers relying too heavily on that quack Jack Horner them being man-made mutants with frog DNA.

They were velociraptors in the book too, so that wasn’t something the movie did. IIRC in the book they were also the size of real velociraptors: more dog-sized than the larger-than-humans movie raptors. I guess they thought that wouldn’t have been intimidating enough on screen (I’d disagree with that, but that’s what I’m guessing their reasoning was).

There was lot of stuff that was changed and removed for the movie, of course (that’s just the way adaptations go). My personal favorite bit ‘o crazy from the book that should have made it into the movie was the dino-keepers trying to chase down the escaped T-Rex with a tranquilizer dart so big it had to be fired with an RPG launcher. Just take a moment to picture that.

I haven’t played Far Cry 3 (I know, I should) but by your description I’m guessing it’s a pretty accurate depiction. They’re generally classified as one of the most dangerous zoo animals, right up there with tigers, gorillas, and elephants. That means no direct contact is allowed with them, no going into their enclosure while they’re loose, all training/medical procedures need to be done through a fence, etc. And they look like an emu crossed with a turkey.

There is, apparently, one nice cassowary. She’s used for public presentations in a bird show. When I saw her brought out, quite a few people (myself included) started looking for the closest exit. It was pretty cool to watch her once I stopped fearing for my internal organs.

*reads through comments* Wow. Apparently people who are reading this satirical webcomic about societal gender norms and cultural references for grammar and animal facts are having a bad time… Go figure.

I think it’s to the comic’s credit that it’s meaty enough to allow discussion of its finer details. Coleasquid has crafted a world with credible characters, well, in this case recreated the world of Jurassic Park with enough fidelity that there’s more in it to talk about than gender questions and pop culture references.

Not that the grammar policy discussion isn’t completely peripheral and a fine argument for the “don’t read comments” movement.

This particular comic stresses the (too often ignored) fact that, in the face of Nature, Man is more likely to be the loser in a physical confrontation. For one thing, Nature has blessed most creatures with evolutionary adaptations for self-defense & obtaining food…Man’s intellect and fine manipulators can create tools to compensate, but is overall weak (physically speaking). In fact, Man is the ONLY species on this planet that has made its continued existence DEPEND ENTIRELY upon making & using tools…We don’t grow the horns/claws/fangs/venoms/toxins/etc that other species do. Some other species can & do *use* tools, but can still survive & obtain food without *requiring* tools. Can a human run down & catch a rabbit bare-handed? Highest probably is that the human would go hungry, but some predatory animals can & do so on a regular basis. But by constructing some form of ranged weapon or a trap changes the odds in favor of a well-fed human.

Actually, a man can run down a lot of animals and catch them bare-handed.

Don’t knock our physical capabilities. We’re a lot bigger than most creatures, which means we are pretty strong. We also have good sight range and excellent vision acuity, high endurance, and the ability to adapt to multiple environments. And that’s all before factoring in our (so far) unparalleled intelligence. By nature, man is a survivor and a predator. If we weren’t good at surviving solely due to our physiology, then we wouldn’t have made it far enough to sharpen a rock. Most animals are wary, if not downright afraid of us.

I think you’re not much considering that early proto-humans were primarily gatherers & scavengers until we started using & making tools…We didn’t really become predators until we had the tools to go on the offensive.

Are you sure? Humans have a lot of biological features that are more indicative of a predator species, such as forward-set eyes, or canines. We’re also capable of some fairly impressive feats where endurance or raw speed is concerned: notably, we can outrun a horse over a short distance, or chase a deer until its exhausted. Of course, such feats in regards to predation rely more on group work than individual ability.

Perhaps one of our genetic ancestors were once herbivores or omnivores, but humans and some of their immediate predecessors are most definitely predators by nature, and not simply through tool usage.

We’re indeed persistence hunters by design, but even modern-day persistence hunters have several other food-gathering methods (it’s not the most… efficient… hunting method, and works best when the target animal’s weakened already), and we’re still much squishier than most of the other predators and many herbivores on this green Earth. We basically made it this far because we could tell each other where the easiest to grab food is. :v

Also, we’re still omnivores (evidence: our teeth and intestines). We’re just omnivores that hunt a lot, like bears or chickens (chickens are basically modern Velociraptors and will gleefully eat anything that can fit in their crop, including lizards, snakes, and each other).

I hate that dinosaur. I know you should just cast a quick mute on it (Or silence. Can’t remember which), but I built my party to be a hard-hitting, spell-slinging, daul-casting, Octa-hitting group of pure awesome, and Mute is a long way from Ultima, Particularly when it hits first. And the darn dinosaur is just so hard to find!

Hullo, long time reader, first time commenter (commentor? commentator? common tater?) Anyways, always have liked the comic and how it looks. I assume, quite possibly erroneously , that Coelasquid uses a computer program for the art. Just curious what she uses. If this has already been asked and answered, if anyone could point me to the comment section it is in, it would be much appreciated.

Well Hippos are not 100% herbivore. they are also omivore that prefers plants over meat. but piss them off. then you and anything that stands in their way will be on their menu. “mm.. that human.. tastes like.. crocodile.”

In defense of the guy saying “They won’t hurt us”, we are probably so tiny we don’t register as a plausible threat. Sure, the hippos, elephants, moose, and rhinos will attack humans who get too close, but will they do the same to ants or mice? I highly doubt it.

Of course, it really would be nice if people would at least skim the comments before they bring up one of the same three talking points that I’ve been listening to people parrot over and over again for weeks on end. It’s pretty easy to skim for my comments, I’m the only person with a yellow name.

These comments seem to be in dire need of a subject change, so I’ll introduce one! Coelasquid, I’ve wondered for a while now. . . what brand of cigars does the Commander smoke? I’ve always loved hand-rolled smokes, and recently I’ve started making enough money that I can finally smoke them again, so I’m curious as to his taste. Maybe it matches mine!

I know this is a reference to Jurassic Park, but the demonic part of my brain has command me to point out that it could be interpreted as the Commander and his two kids on a vacation through time with a nasty ending.

Wait, you’ve met Jeff Goldblum?
…This is ironic, as yesterday I bought a DVD of this bird movie with him, Leonard Nimoy, and Samuel L. Jackson, and this morning was talking about him with a friend. I am only just now reading this comic strip, since I decided to catch up on it after not being able to read it for a few months.